I’m sitting in my recliner late on a Sunday night, surrounded by a week’s worth of newspapers, when the phone rings. “I’ve been meaning to call you,” my ex-wife says. “There was something funny in a Bob Greene column.”
“But what part?” she asks. It’s hard to believe but it’s obviously true: after all these years the only woman I ever married is still not sure that we share the same sense of humor.
She’s right, I realize, and suddenly we’re both laughing. My laughter is tinged with sadness as I wonder how I could ever have let this woman get away.
“Oh, it wasn’t one of his real bad ones.” She actually excuses him. “At least there wasn’t a kid in it.”
“You know what’s pathetic is that he doesn’t really think he’s pathetic. He thinks he’s being cute.”
“Well, then it turns out that the black guy has friends in high places,” I hurry on. “His wife’s a judge, blah, blah, blah. So the fine isn’t enough. Now they’re going to revoke the guy’s chauffeur’s license.”
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Like Mary Mitchell, I have no idea what actually happened in Nooruddin Atashi’s Yellow Cab that night in May. But I do know that if one of those pricks ever slid that bulletproof window closed in my face, he wouldn’t have a passenger for long. I would be out the door quicker than you could say “camel jockey.”
